


soap bubble memories

by softnow



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Showers, Smut, just all the good stuff guys, two totally platonic fbi agents getting wet and soapy through the years
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-06-12 19:42:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15347268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softnow/pseuds/softnow
Summary: five times mulder and scully showered together + and one time they bathed.





	soap bubble memories

i.

The first time, he’s just gotten her back. Again. After she was taken from him. Again. To say he’s on edge would be the understatement of the century. 

When they get back to the motel and she says she needs a shower, he thinks of mutants and sewer monsters, things that could find their way through drainage pipes to steal her a third time. He’ll be damned if he lets it happen again. So he stands outside her bathroom door, arms folded and alert, her own personal sentinel that she neither asked for nor approved, and listens. One wrong splash, one concerning clang, and he’s going in.

He hears the shower start, and that’s fine. The rustle of fabric, fine too. What’s not fine is the silence that follows, long and drawn out. He waits for the whisk of the shower curtain, for the pitter-patter sounds of water ricochetting off of her and onto the tile, for the thump of a knocked over shampoo bottle—anything. 

Silence. 

And then, a sound. 

It’s low, so low he definitely would have missed it had he not been one step away from pulling the old water-glass-to-the-door trick. A muffled sniffle, a shaky inhale. Crying, he realizes. She’s crying.

He’s through the door before he can think to knock, and she jumps out of her skin, one hand coming up to ward him off while the other clutches at the towel wrapped around her. There’s fear in her eyes, the kind he’s never seen before. Primal, animalistic. It takes her a moment to realize it’s him, just him, and then the fear is replaced by something else. Shame.

“Mulder,” she says in a bad imitation of her own voice. 

“What’s wrong?” he asks, because he is an idiot who’s never learned how to comfort someone.

“I’m fine.” She isn’t. “Please, just go.” He doesn’t. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

“Tell me what’s wrong,” he says, because he’s a persistent idiot. Because her eyes are watery and her cheeks are splotchy and there are bruises on her pale, bare arms.

She doesn’t want to tell him. That much is clear. She holds her towel around her like armor and refuses to face him head on, giving him her shoulder and looking at him slant. The shower continues to run, pumping the tiny bathroom full of hot, humid steam. He hedges closer by inches and half-steps until he can brush the tears from her cheek with his thumb. She doesn’t pull away.

“It’s just me,” he says. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

Her hair, she says at last. He wanted to wash her hair. And she can’t… She _can’t_. 

She says it like it’s something to be ashamed of. For the second time in nearly as many minutes, he doesn’t think. He steps away from her and undoes his shirt and tie, letting them fall to join her discarded clothes on the floor. When he reaches for his belt, she startles into action.

“Mulder!” Her wide eyes show a different kind of fear. Not a mortal fear now, not a fear for her life, but fear nonetheless. 

“Don’t worry, Scully.” He flashes her his most charming grin. I’m non-threatening, Scully, see? “We’re keeping it clean.”

He shucks his clothes down to his boxers and pulls open the shower curtain with a little flourish. After you.

“What are you doing?” She tightens her grip on her towel.

“Trust me,” he says. “Leave that on. Come here.”

And wonder of wonders, she does. He guides her into the tub with a gentle hand on her back, an action he’s performed so many times but never through a single layer of motel-grade terrycloth. He gets in after her and draws the curtain. 

For a minute, they only stare at each other. There’s something surreal about it, about standing in an inch of water in a grungy shower in Minnesota in his underwear with his partner in her towel. She has a look on her face—it’s not quite a Scully look, not quite her _Mulder, what are we doing here_ look, but it’s the closest thing he’s seen all night. It loosens something in his chest.

“Mulder…”

“Back you go, come on.” He guides her under the spray and keeps his gaze locked on her face as he reaches to wet her hair. She flinches when he touches her, and he rubs his thumb gently over her cheek. “Just me, Scully. We’re good. We’re fine.”

She bites her lip and watches him closely as he squeezes a sizable dollop of shampoo into his palm. He works it into her hair gingerly and she trembles, breathing deeply, a little raggedly. He tilts her head back a little so she can see his eyes. _I’ve got you._

“Smells good,” he says lightly. “What is this, apple?”

It’s not. He knows it’s not. But she’s looking a little far away and he wants to hear her, wants her to correct him and tell him it’s—

“Pear,” she says. 

Ah, Scully. There you are.

He finishes his lather and nudges her back under the spray to rinse. Her hair is soft and thick and he thinks under different circumstances, he might be enjoying this in a very different way.

“Conditioner?” he asks when the last of the shampoo is swirling in the drain.

She shakes her head. “That’s okay,” she says in a voice that sounds closer to her own. “I—I can take it from here.”

He resists the urge to volley her a little _sure you don’t need me to wash your back?_ It’s not the night for that.

“Okay. I’ll just be out—” He hikes a thumb over his shoulder. “—here.”

Water sloshes around his feet as he moves to step out of the tub. His boxers are damp and stuck to him like an uncomfortable second skin. 

“Mulder.”

He turns, eyebrows lifted expectantly. 

“Thank you.”

“Always,” he says, and means it.

 

ii.

The second time, he’s losing her. Again. Not to lights in the sky, not to a man with the devil in his heart, but to her very own body. If he thought having her taken from him all at once was bad, having her taken from him bit by bit right before his eyes is downright excruciating.

He’s been spending a lot of time on her couch lately. He wants to be close to her, to be there for whatever she might need, and she doesn’t protest. He almost wishes she would. His Scully doesn’t need help. His Scully doesn’t like to be smothered, to have her space encroached upon. 

His Scully doesn’t throw up on herself in the shower.

It’s the sound of falling shampoo and soap bottles that alerts him first. He’s up and at the bathroom door so fast there’s probably still an outline of him, Road Runner-style, on the living room rug. 

“You okay?” he calls, and then he hears it, the unmistakable retching noises. He wishes fiercely that he wasn’t so familiar with that sound. “Scully? I’m coming in, okay?”

Steam hits him like a wall when he pushes through the door. It’s _hot_. The walls are sweating, it’s so hot. Because she’s always cold now, he knows. Because a little clump of cells has stolen her fire. If it wasn’t a part of her, he’d shoot it, maim it, break it into a million pieces with his bare fucking hands.

The shower door is fogged, but he recognizes the shape of her, backed into the corner and bent double. He can hear her ragged breathing over the roar of the running water.

“Scully?”

“I’m—” A cough. “I’m fine, Mulder. Go back…go back outside.”

He doesn’t believe her, but hearing those words, the hallmark of his stubborn, self-sufficient Scully, rallies his heart a little. 

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Yes. I’m okay.”

He’ll let her have this one. She’s not okay, not in the slightest, but if she has the energy to say she is, he won’t push. She needs this. He needs this.

At least, that’s what he tells himself right up until he sees her blurry figure flag and topple over. He’s got the shower door yanked open and her in his arms almost before she hits the floor.

“I’m fine,” she protests weakly, but she doesn’t fight him when he sets her on her feet and holds her against him. 

He’s still fully dressed—sweatshirt, jeans, socks, the whole nine—but he doesn’t care. Let her soak him. Let her leave whatever marks she can, no matter how ephemeral. He’ll take them all.

“I’ve got you.” 

He rubs her back, thinks _this is not how this should be happening._ The first time he has her naked in the shower, he should be lifting her against the wall, tasting the soap on her neck, feeling her legs, strong and steady, around his waist. Not counting the notches on her spine. Not trying not to cry when he realizes just how frail she’s become.

“Mulder…”

He waits for the admonition, for her to tell him to let her go, to get out of her shower, to go home for fuck’s sake, she’s fine, she’s fine. 

It doesn’t come. 

She sags against him, too light and too heavy all at once.

“Are you ready to get out?” he asks. “Do you want me to get a towel?”

“No… I need… I only washed my hair.” 

She pushes away from him and crosses her arms over her breasts. She looks pale and tired, but sturdy. It lasts all of two seconds. He sees it coming this time and catches her before she falls. 

“Okay, Scully. Alright. I’ve got you. We’re gonna get you all cleaned up in no time, don’t you worry.” He hates the sound of his voice, all doctor-soft and just this side of patronizing. 

Apparently she does, too, because she pushes at him again and says, “Mulder, no. You don’t have to—”

But he’s already reaching for her soap and a loofa. 

“What if I want to, huh?” And that’s good, his voice. It’s almost normal again. “C’mon, g-woman, give a guy a thrill.” And that’s not good. That is, in fact, the exact wrong thing. He watches her face crumple, her arms tightening defensively around her chest.

“I’m not…”

And he gets it. Suddenly he gets why she hides under so many layers, even more than usual in the past few weeks. Why, even when the sweating starts, when she wakes up drenched and stumbles out of her bedroom to turn down the thermostat, she comes wrapped in her robe.

“Hey.” He cups her face in one hand, makes her look at him. “You _are_.” And he means it. He means it so much it hurts. Almost as much as it hurts to see the pain in her eyes. “But if it makes you feel better…”

He heaves a dramatic, silly sigh and makes a show of squeezing his eyes tight. She doesn’t make a sound, but he’s spent years perfecting his Scullydar and he thinks he feels a smile. A little one, maybe, but it’s there. He’ll take it. 

He washes her gingerly with no small amount of fumbling, and she, for all her protesting, lets him. The water turns cold by the time he’s finished, and he somehow manages to get her wrapped in a towel without slipping in his disgustingly wet socks and taking them both out.

Later, when they’re dry and warm and sitting side-by-side on the couch, watching without watching some movie with Tom Cruise that could really be any movie with Tom Cruise, she reaches out tentatively and folds her tiny hand into his, gives him one gentle squeeze.

Thank you, she doesn’t say.

He’s sure she knows the answer.

 

iii.

The third time is a one-step-forward-two-steps-back sort of deal.

One step forward: they’re both finally naked. Actually naked. No towels, no damp underwear, no sodden jeans.

Two steps back: it’s a decontamination shower. And Scully is pissed.

She hasn’t said anything about it yet, of course. Oh, no. Not Scully. But he knows. He’s known since the door to his apartment burst inward and Diana appeared, some sort of perverse savior here to whisk them away to sterile tile and scalding water. 

He tries to think of a joke to make, something to break the tension, to ease those tight shoulders of hers, but he comes up empty. He doesn’t feel much like joking right now. Half of him feels like reaching across this damn little privacy wall—if that’s what whoever designed it thinks it really is—and giving her a good shake. Say something, he wants to yell. Talk to me. The other half of him feels like reaching for her for an entirely different reason.

What would she do if he climbed over this stupid wall and pressed her against it? Sock him good one, probably. He can still feel the shape of her knuckles on his face if he tries hard enough. It’s not as much of a deterrent as it probably should be. He really is one sick bastard, isn’t he? 

But this isn’t the time for that sort of thinking. The last thing he wants is for her to catch a glimpse and get the idea that he has some sort of decon kink. (Although…he could. With her. Under the right conditions. He definitely could.)

And speaking of glimpsing… He tries to keep his eyes above sea level. He really does. This situation isn’t ideal, and they didn’t ask for this, and the last thing he wants to do is violate her privacy if she doesn’t want him to. He owes her that much. But then she turns towards him and, well, he’s only human. Sue him.

She’s…stunning. This isn’t news. He knows she’s stunning. Has known for years. But the reality of it hits him full-force here, in the most inopportune of places. The shower is so impersonal, so clinical, but she’s so alive. So soft and pink and incredible. And unhappy. Can’t forget that. But she’s here. She’s here and she’s tucking her wet hair behind her ears and meeting his gaze and then— _oh_ , and then—her eyes slip. Just for a second. Just before she turns away. And he thinks (maybe) he sees (perhaps) a flash of something hungry, something that mirrors (if he’s really, really lucky) how he’s looking at her.

Maybe if—when—they get out of here, if— _when_ —things go back to normal, maybe they’ll be okay.

 

iv.

On the first day of the new millennium— _the first day of the last year of the old millennium, Mulder, technically_ —he wakes up with one arm throbbing and the other arm numb. 

The throbbing is familiar. Gunshot wound. Nothing new. Had a few of those already. The numbness, though. The numbness is new. The numbness is the direct result of his doctor, the one who took such good care of him last night and is now curled against him like a sleepy baby kitten. He’s never been so happy to not feel his hand.

She wakes in stages, snuggling closer and making the cutest little snuffly noises he’s ever heard. The tip of her nose grazes his throat and he wills her to go back to sleep, to stay right there, to let him memorize the feel of this. But then she stiffens in his arms and jerks upright.

“Oh god.” Her eyes are big, worried. “Are you okay? I didn’t—”

“Never better,” he says, which might not be the truth as far as his arm is concerned, but is absolutely the truth as far as the rest of him is.

She frets with his sling, testing and adjusting, poking and prodding. 

“Seriously, I’m fine,” he says once she’s made all of her little checks and seems satisfied. He rolls his neck and catches a whiff of himself—dirt, decay, hospital, sweat. Pears. That last one, he thinks, is very good. The rest…not so much. “A little ripe, maybe. Sorry ’bout that.”

She smiles then, a happy, playful Scullysmile, the likes of which he usually has to fight for. He feels warm all over. This is the best morning he’s ever had, he’s sure of it. No morning could be better than this.

It’s just like her to prove him wrong, though, because the next thing out of her mouth is something ripped straight from his mental folder of Things Scully Would Never Say But I Wish She Would.

“Guess we should take a shower then, huh?”

He gapes at her. There’s nothing eloquent about it. Nothing eloquent, either, about the way he squeaks, “We?”

“Unless you feel up to doing it yourself?” She runs her fingers along his sling and this isn’t a doctor’s touch anymore. Oh, no. This is a woman’s touch. A flirting woman’s touch.

“No,” he says quickly. Maybe too quickly. He doesn’t care. “No, no. Not at all. My arm…”

“Well, then. Come on.”

He follows her to the bathroom in a daze. Who is this woman, and where has she been hiding for the last seven-odd years? Was it really as simple as a New Year’s kiss? Sure, they’ve been working up to it. Things have been changing for the better, she’s been smiling more, been more open to his flirting, but this…

She helps him out of his sling and his shirt, going slow so as not to hurt him, then checks his wound. Her face is all doctor, and this is familiar. This is good. Then she disappears for a minute and returns with a plastic bag.

“Keep this arm out of the water, okay?” she says as she fashions a makeshift cover for his bandages.

“You got it, doc.” 

Her hands fall to his waist and she fingers the elastic of his sweats. The doctor’s gone once more.

“Now,” she says. “Let’s get you out of these.”

If being stripped by Scully is high on the list of things he’s always wanted, watching Scully strip all but _is_ the list. It’s nothing he’s never seen before, of course, but he’s never seen it like this—healthy, whole, asking to be looked at. At least, he thinks he’s allowed to look. Uncertainty creeps in and he raises his gaze from her breasts (pale, round, fucking amazing) to somewhere above her head.

She’s his partner and his doctor. And he’s injured. Of course he’s going to want to take care of him. So she’s never taken care of him in quite this capacity before—so what? It wouldn’t be the first time one of them has helped the other bathe. He remembers a time not three years ago when he did this for her with his eyes closed. Yeah, Mulder. Way to go. Make more of it than it is. 

He’s startled out of a healthy round of self-flagellation by her warm hands covering his hips, pushing him gently back towards the shower. 

“This whole thing works better if we’re _in_ ,” she says. 

Again with the we. A guy could get used to this.

Scully adjusts the water temperature and peruses his meager assortment of soaps. He stands, dutifully keeping his injured arm cradled to his stomach and out of the spray, and stares. 

“Cat got your tongue, Mulder?”

He blinks. “What?”

“You’re being quiet. Everything okay?”

“No, yeah, this is… You’re… It’s perfect.”

She makes a little pleased sound in her throat and pushes onto her toes to brush her lips against his chin. The length of her naked body presses ever so briefly against his and effectively shorts out any and all thinking he may have been doing. If he _had_ been able to think, he would have tilted down and kissed her on the mouth. But once his brain finally catches up, she’s already moving away and pouring shampoo into her palm. His chin burns in the shape of her lips.

When she directs him to bend down so she can wash his hair, he finds himself inches from those incredible breasts. Best breasts he’s ever seen, truly. Bravo, Scully. He marvels at her small pink nipples, at the way they crinkle as he exhales over them. And is it his imagination, or is she arching just a little bit towards him? 

Never let it be said that Fox Mulder can’t decode some nonverbal communication. It may take him a minute, but he gets there eventually. And he’s definitely getting there right now. Oh, is he ever. He closes the distance and takes the peak of one breast into his mouth. She’s soft, so soft, even as she hardens on his tongue, and she tastes like soap and hot water. It’s his new favorite flavor. 

She moans softly, the sort of sound he’s never heard from her before, the sort of sound he’ll do anything to hear again, and arches into him for real. But then she tugs at his hair and bends the other way, says “Mulder” even as he tries to chase after his mouth’s new best friend.

“I’m not done cleaning you,” she says.

“Don’t wanna be clean,” he mumbles into the curve of her breast. “Wanna be dirty.”

“ _Nooo_ ,” she teases, pushing him back against the wall and kissing his sternum. “As your doctor, it’s imperative that I clean every—” His stomach. “—last—” His hipbone. “—part of you.”

Her mouth closing around him is hotter than the shower could ever hope to be. She burns, scorches, and he wants to go up in flames. And the noises she makes—god, the noises. He grips her hair with his good hand and tries his damnedest not to shove himself deeper, but it feels so good, so fucking good, and she’s sucking and licking and doing this thing with her hands and he’s—he’s— 

Making a mess. A big, wonderful mess that comes from the depths of his soul with enough force to knock him on his ass if she weren’t keeping him flush to the wall.

“Scully, I—god, that was… I’m sorry,” he huffs, and whatever apologies he might force out next die in his throat when he looks down.

She’s grinning the most wicked grin he’s ever seen and she’s licking him clean without ever moving her eyes from his and this is it, folks, this is the best fucking year he’s ever had and it’s only ten hours old.

He can’t wait for the rest.

 

v.

He doesn’t remember much about that night, the one when Scully came baring news of his mother. He remembers the gut-punch ache of it, of feeling like the rug had been pulled out from under him and he was helpless on the way down. He remembers her arms around him, her mouth at his temple whispering comforting platitudes. It’s okay, it’s okay. I’m here, I’m here.

He doesn’t remember what he did after that, how he got from the chair to the couch, from the couch to the kitchen. Whisky. He remembers needing whisky, reaching for the bottle, losing his grip. The crash of glass on the floor, the stab of glass in his heel, is the clearest memory he has. Physical pain has a way of doing that, of making things clear. Emotional pain only makes things muddy.

He remembers Scully, remembers her wide, wet eyes, the way she’d said his name.

“Let me see,” she said. He remembers her tending to his bleeding foot right there on the kitchen floor. His doctor. His friend. His only person in the world now.

He thinks he might have tried to tell her that. He isn’t sure. The next thing he remembers is standing in the bathroom, naked from the waist down, Scully in the kitchen, cleaning up his mess. Always cleaning up his mess. She cleaned him up next. He remembers that. Gave him a sponge bath in front of the sink, quick and efficient, all professionalism and Ph.D. except for the way she stroked his hair, kissed his cheeks, whispered soft, sweet reassurances in his ear. 

The only thing he remembers after that is being in bed, her tiny body curled around him while he cried dry tears. He’d left all the wet ones out there in the living room. He didn’t say thank you. He remembers that too, perfectly clear. He didn’t say thank you.

He says it later in a motel in California. They’re in the shower, arms tight around each other, water hot on his back. He murmurs it into her hair, wet against his nose, and feels her move closer to him.

“Always,” she says, and he knows she means it. 

 

\+ i.

“You ever do it in the bath?”

She’s pressed to the inside of his hotel room door, and the bed’s there, right there, not even five feet away, but that’s five feet too many when her neck tastes this good and she’s asking such intriguing questions.

“You propositioning me, Agent Scully?” He nips her earlobe with his teeth and she makes the sound—yes, that one—and tightens her hands in his hair.

“Depends on your answer.”

He nuzzles her cheek. “Once.” Licks her pulse point. Perfume, champagne, Scully. Delicious. “Wasn’t very good.” Nibbles her collarbone. “Well?”

“What?” She rolls her hips against his and nearly makes him forget his question. Nearly.

“You propositioning me or not?”

“Mm…” She noses his jaw and flicks her tongue against his Adam’s apple. Christ. This woman’s going to kill him one day, and he’ll be happy to go. “Meet me in the bathroom to find out.”

And then she’s gone. Slipped right out of his arms like a sly little animal. Like a fox. He grins, wonders what she’d say if he told her that. Probably something about his own narcissism.

She’s bent over the enormous bathtub when he finds her, pouring capfuls of sweet-smelling liquid into the running water and presenting him with the curve of her ass. He slips his hands beneath the hem of her dress and pushes it up. And up. And up and up and up and fucking fuck she’s not wearing underwear. 

He feels suddenly very dizzy as his mind helpfully applies this information to the rest of their evening. Scully, next to him in the car. Without underwear. Scully, making smalltalk with those Hollywood people before the movie. Without underwear. Scully, next to him in the theatre. Without underwear.

He strokes the inside of her thigh higher and higher and and doesn’t even get all of the way to the top before encountering the slick proof of how badly she wants him. Scully, dripping for him in an overpriced hotel room. Without underwear.

“Still think I’m propositioning you, Agent Mulder?” she asks over her shoulder, a breathtakingly playful glint in her eye.

“You better be,” he says, and pushes two fingers into her.

Her knees wobble and she grips the tub for balance. She swivels her hips against him and says in her low, throaty voice that he loves so much, “Take your clothes off and get in the tub.”

He loves it when she’s assertive. He strokes her clit once, twice, before withdrawing. “Yes, _ma’am._ ”

The water’s on this side of too-hot as he lowers himself into it, but then Scully’s lowering herself into it too—lowering herself onto _him_ —and it could be the center of the sun for all he cares; he’s not going anywhere.

Bubbles conceal all the best parts of her, but he has a good imagination and an even better memory, and his fingers know how to find all the good spots on their own. He works her breasts with one hand and her clit with the other and kisses her like he’s starving. She gives as good as she gets—that’s his Scully, always equal opportunity—and before long, they’ve sent half of the bathwater crashing over the side of the tub. Much more and they’re going to have to pay for damages, but right now he can’t seem to think of anything but the way she squeezes him as she slides up and swivels her hips when she rams him home again.

“Oh, like that,” she groans into his mouth when he thrusts against her. “Don’t stop.”

As if he could. As if he would so much as entertain the idea of stopping. Aliens can land and take over the White House for all he cares; he is otherwise occupied.

“Gonna come for me, Scully?” He can feel her pulse hammering as he tongues her neck. 

“Uh-huh.”

“Soon?”

“Uh-huh.”

He bends his knees for leverage even as his ass slides along the slick bottom of the tub and digs his fingers into her hips, bringing her down onto him _hard_.

“Now, baby, come on. Let me have it.”

And she does. Oh, she does. She lets him have it so hard that he can do nothing but return it in kind. This bathroom has astounding acoustics; their cries echo and reverberate as they come down together, panting and dropping little kisses on any patch of skin they can reach.

“‘Baby?’” she asks when she can speak again.

“Yes?”

She smacks his arm, but it’s a feeble smack. The smack of an exhausted, satiated, well-fucked woman. He did that to her. For her. God, it’s still so surreal sometimes, especially now, here, in this absurdly large half-full tub.

“Hey,” she says after a while, once the water’s begun to cool.

“Hmm?” He strokes the small of her back and she arches against him, nuzzling his neck.

“Wash my hair?”

He pulls back enough to kiss her mouth softly.

“For you, Scully? Always.”


End file.
